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Vice-Admiral Joel McKenna grew up in
Jersey City, New Jersey, one of 10 children of a rail yard
worker and his wife. His mother, Maura, was prone to
consumption, contracted when she was young and working in a
lace-making sweatshop. His father, 'Paddy' McKenna, was a large
bruiser of a man who favored Irish whiskey and cigars when he
was at home (which was a rarity, especially as his family grew,
and his wife grew more and more transparent). He had a short
temper, no toleration for other than the most basic education
(he deemed it unnecessary), and put his children to work as soon
as he could. Joel was somewhere in the middle of the children,
favored by his ailing mother for his then 'angelic' looks, and
chosen in her heart to be the son who would be the priest in the
family. Once she made up her mind, he received what the other
children in his family did not, a formal education, not in the
public schools, but in St. Kevin's School for Young Men.
Maura McKenna frugally saved money
from what little Paddy gave her to run the house and paid the
meager tuition to the Irish Christian Brothers, who ran the
school. Admiring the determination of the ailing woman, the
headmaster, Brother Michael, granted the boy a scholarship,
setting him further apart from both his schoolmates and his
family. Maura then used the monies, allocated for tuition, for
other things that she lavished on her son. Over time, his
siblings grew more angry and jealous of the gifts of food and
treats that he received and that they did not. In return, they
rarely gave the boy a chance to defend himself from the verbal
and physical abuse that he frequently had to endure. His father
merely ignored the boy, thinking him totally valueless in a
world that required hard work, not cerebral learning.
In spite of, or perhaps because of,
his environment, Joel determined if that he were to rise
anywhere in the world, he would have to have something, or
someone, behind him. Therefore, he began to cultivate
relationships that, even at an early age, showed him the way to
advance.
At school, he sold his treats of
food to older boys. In turn, he would then take that money and
buy homework and papers from the smarter boys in his classes. As
he got older, he began to network those same boys to others,
taking a percentage of the monies as his share of the profit. By
eighth grade, he had an extensive underground business that was
thriving. As he moved to the High School, his business grew
even larger. Unfortunately, he became so adept at faking his own
papers and cheating on his tests that, in reality, he learned
very little, although his grades reflected a much higher
learning curve. He developed the ingenuity and ability to
survive without much work or effort, but had not learned much
from books.
As his high school years came closer
to ending, he realized he needed to find a way to obtain a
college degree, but he also realized he didn’t have the finances
for it. He wasn't a excellent student or athlete, so he realized
that there was no chance for scholarship monies. He then turned
his interest to the service academies. He decided that the one
he would get into would be the Naval Academy. In his way of
reasoning, the Army was too dirty for his liking and did too
much marching; therefore West Point was not an option. The
thought of flying made him sick to his stomach and eliminated
the Air Force Academy. By process of elimination, he chose the
Navy. He reasoned that anyone could sail a ship, and most of
the officers he saw didn't go to sea much. They seemed to spend
more time on land than water.
After finding out that there was
such a thing as 'Orphan Appointments' that were given after the
initial appointment list was announced, he sat in motion a plan
to ‘buy’ an appointment to the Academy. These particular
appointments were for the young men who wanted an appointment
but couldn't get one by any other manner. There was maneuvering
and political favors to be given, but Joel McKenna would not be
stopped. He would get what he wanted. He paid someone to take
his SATs, paid someone to take his physical, got his letters in,
used his charisma to pass the interview, and finally got into
the Academy. By this time, his mother had faded out of his life,
and his father, uncharacteristically numbed by the loss of a
woman who he hadn't paid more than a brief, monthly attention to
in life, but suddenly sainted in death, laughed at him when he
said he was going to Annapolis. To add insult to injury, Paddy
openly bet with his friends that his son would flunk out before
he got to his second year (Third class). That challenge made
McKenna more determined to get in and get ahead.
Plebe summer and Plebe year proved
to more difficult than he ever imagined. All his wiles and
machinations couldn't help him; he had to do enough to make it
thorough on his own. He both surprised and pleased himself, when
he found at the end of Plebe year, that he had made it to the
end of the year and managed to pass. Barely, but he was
staying. He ranked third from the bottom of the Fourth year
class, but he ranked. He managed to stay in his class with his
now polished methods of deceit and intimidation.
During his first class year, a young
man, remarkably younger that the rest, but outstandingly smarter
than most, arrived as a Plebe. The two were complete opposites
of each other in every way. McKenna, over six feet tall,
muscular with an already-developing layer of fat, was a born
bully who pushed and fought his way through school, but was also
smart enough to conceal it. Harriman Nelson, still some inches
short of his final growth, had barely made the height limit. The
youngster was slender, quiet, and undeniably brilliant. It was
that high intelligence that had made the Navy waive the age
requirement (18 years old) before some other school grabbed him.
McKenna disliked Nelson on sight and chose him, along with two
other plebes, as his special ‘targets’ for his own brand of
hazing. One of the others dropped out and one committed
suicide. Nelson, however, endured, completing his Plebe year
with a 4.0 average, in spite of the covert and often sadistic
persecution. McKenna, on the other hand, graduated nearly at the
bottom of his class.
Nelson had a meteoric military
career, rivaled only by his scientific successes. McKenna
received his promotions by a combination of blackmail, bribes,
and risking the lives of his men in grandstand plays, some of
which actually succeeded. Nelson achieved the rank of admiral
several months after his 44th birthday, making him the second
youngest admiral in American history. (The late
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt holds the distinction, even to
this day, of being the youngest). McKenna was promoted a year
later. When Nelson resigned from the Navy soon after receiving
his third star, built the Institute and, what many called the
greatest ship on earth, the submarine Seaview, McKenna's
often hidden jealousy became an incandescent rage and raging
hate.
From that point on, McKenna sought
to extract revenge on Harriman Nelson and his men, not because
they were wrong, or committed some kind of crime, but because
they had a reputation for doing the ‘right thing’, and were
often hailed for their achievements, while he wallowed in what
he believed was obscurity. He had come, by some bizarre
reasoning, to believe that Nelson was the cause of all his
personal failures, at and since the Academy. That Harriman
Nelson was a fraud and a fake, and that he, Joel McKenna, was
the only one to see through him and the only one who could ‘take
him down’. Once he formulated his plan, he set about to attempt
to destroy the scientist/inventor at every turn. Over the period
of years, he managed to have him for treason, arrested Commander
Lee Crane for mutiny and direct disobeying orders, and was
instrumental in the arrest and near death of Lieutenant
Commander Chip Morton for treason, among other things.
In each incidence, however, somehow
he was defeated, very often at the last moment. At one point,
toward the end of his years, he secretly allied himself with a
Colombian Drug Cartel leader, Miguel Rodriguez. McKenna
provided covert intelligence to the rogue Colombian in his
pursuit to kill Nelson, and all associated with him, in
retribution for the destruction of a major underwater laboratory
that processed massive amounts of cocaine. Ultimately, his
actions only heaped further acclamation on the man he hated so
much, and he died years later, in his final attempt to kill
Nelson.
(With
appreciation and gratitude to Mariann Hornlein, the creator of
Joel McKenna, for allowing us to ‘have’ him. She gave us part
of his later life, but the bio is ours.) |
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